Hamster does not exercise

[Gero]

We got a new male hamster a month ago, we believe him to be about 2 or maybe 3 months old, he was quite small and a bit undernourished, he also had a scar near the eye that prevent him to fully open his eye, he is better now but we feel that he is gaining to much weight and he also almost never uses his wheel, at first we gave him a regular wheel and notice he never using it after a few weeks we change it to a disk wheel which we think he prefers but he also uses it for a few minutes at night and that is it.

is this normal for male hamsters? we had 3 hamsters including this one and the other two run all night, they are both female hamsters though. can we do something to have him exercise a bit more?

I'm including one photo of when he was little and a few from this morning

[Ria P]

I'd put the regular wheel back in and leave the flying saucer in as well. He may be using it when you're asleep. I rarely see my hamster using his wheel because he waits til i'm gone off to bed.
Put a little substrate on top of the wheel to check if he's using it.
I'd weigh him weekly or so to monitor his weight and keep a record.

[Vierville]

He is lovely!

Our one female sounds very much like your little guy. She barely exercises, jumps on to her wheel and runs for about 30 seconds then jumps off.

Our other female runs for hours!

[alpacassei]

My male Russians are like that and so were most my past males. My female russians are a lot more active though and will spend half the day running around and foraging

[Charlie Dunn]

Ohh he’s a beauty! Lovely to hear he is doing well. He doesn’t look over weight. Our ham runs in his wheel for a bit, jumps out, does a circuit around his cage and goes back in his wheel. This goes on several times and then he hides for a bit! All hams are different. We recently bought a motion sensor night vision camera to see what he does when we go to bed. It’s fascinating! So long as he seems happy I’d try not to worry too much x

[Vierville]

Originally Posted by Charlie Dunn

Ohh he’s a beauty! Lovely to hear he is doing well. He doesn’t look over weight. Our ham runs in his wheel for a bit, jumps out, does a circuit around his cage and goes back in his wheel. This goes on several times and then he hides for a bit! All hams are different. We recently bought a motion sensor night vision camera to see what he does when we go to bed. It’s fascinating! So long as he seems happy I’d try not to worry too much x

I must agree, he doesn't look overweight. Each hamster is different, just like people are.

So long as the opportunities are there for him to exercise (large enough cage, safe wheel to run on and/or other exercise toys) then he'll exercise if he wants to.

Have you got a running ball? Perhaps he'd like that and it is a good way to give your hamster exercise. Ours run after us all over the house in their balls. They literally follow you around. It's very cute.

Just make sure that the ventilation slits on the ball are as narrow as possible to avoid getting his little feet stuck and we tape the join of the balls together for extra safety. Obviously an exrcise ball is out of the question if you have cats or dogs about...